Seoul Gazette - UN climate chief says 'new world disorder' threatens cooperation

Simon Stiell, the head of the United Nations climate body, spoke in Istanbul as Turkey prepares to host the COP31 climate summit on its Mediterranean coast later this year, with Australia leading the negotiations.

"COP31 in Antalya will take place in extraordinary times. We find ourselves in a new world disorder," Stiell said in an address alongside the president-designate of COP31, Turkish environment minister Murat Kurum.

"This is a period of instability and insecurity. Of strong arms and trade wars. The very concept of international cooperation is under attack," he said.

He did not name any countries but his plea comes as climate action is competing with concerns over security and economic growth around the world.

Trump has championed oil, gas and coal while moving to withdraw the United States from the UN's bedrock climate treaty after pulling out of the Paris Agreement, the landmark deal reached in 2015 on curbing global warming.

Stiell said in a news conference that the "door remains open" to welcoming the United States back to the fold.

The American leader, who has called global warming a "hoax", revoked on Thursday a landmark scientific finding that underpins US regulations aimed at curbing planet-warming pollution.

Trump has also rattled European allies with his desire to acquire Greenland, as shrinking Arctic sea ice is turning the region into a strategic battleground.

- 'Antidote to the chaos' -

Other nations have resisted moving away from oil, gas and coal.

The COP30 summit in Brazil late last year ended with a modest deal that lacked any explicit mention of fossil fuels amid opposition from oil giants such as Saudi Arabia, coal producer India and others.

The United States, the world's top economy and second-biggest polluter after China, shunned COP30.

The last three years have been the hottest globally on record, driven by rising greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change.

Stiell warned that international climate cooperation was "under unprecedented threat: from those determined to use their power to defy economic and scientific logic, and increase dependence on polluting coal, oil and gas".

"Those forces are undeniably strong. But they need not prevail. There is a clear alternative to this chaos and regression," he said.

"And that is countries standing together, building on all we have achieved to date, to make it (international global cooperation) go further and faster."

He noted that investment in clean energy was more than double that of fossil fuels last year, while renewables overtook coal as the top electricity source.

"Security is the word on most leaders' lips, yet many cling to a definition that is dangerously narrow," Stiell said, warning that rising greenhouse gases mean "escalating climate extremes fuelling famine, displacement, and war".

Stiell urged nations to deliver on their 2023 agreement at COP28 in Dubai to triple clean energy capacity by 2030 and transition away from fossil fuels, and for the most ambitious to form "coalitions of the willing".

"Climate cooperation is an antidote to the chaos and coercion of this moment, and clean energy is the obvious solution to spiralling fossil fuel costs, both human and economic," he said.

Turkey will host COP31 while Australia will chair the negotiations under a compromise that was agreed late last year to end a dispute over where the event would take place.

Kurum said Turkey and Australia would work together to present a "robust" COP31 action agenda in March.

"Regression in global climate action is unacceptable," Kurum said.

L.Shin--SG